Notorious Pleasures (25 page)

He seemed to understand her dilemma. Frustration warred with despair in his eyes.

“Damn you,” he hissed, and kissed her.

His grief and anger over Nick’s death seemed to twist and transform until all he felt was a raw ache for Hero. Right here. Right now.

He arched her over his arm, cruelly putting her off balance as he ravished her mouth. He could feel the clutch of her fingers in his back, but she wasn’t struggling. She made no effort to escape him or his savage plundering of her mouth.

That placated the beast within him a little. He pulled back and looked into her diamond eyes. They were dazed, blurred with sensuous need. He picked her up, ignoring her squeak, and bore her from the library like a rapacious Viking marauder.

Deedle had just entered the hallway. The valet’s mouth dropped open as his master passed.

Griffin shot him a glare, ensuring there would be no unasked-for comments. Then he was mounting the stairs with Hero in his arms.

She buried her face against his chest. “Oh, Lord! He saw us.”

“And he won’t say a damned thing if he wants to keep his position,” Griffin growled.

He strode down the upper corridor and carried her into his bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him. He flung her down on the bed and immediately began prowling up her supine form.

She looked at him with sleepily erotic eyes and whispered, “But he’ll know what we’re doing in here.”

“Good.” He straddled her, caging her with his body. “Were it up to me, all of London would know what we do here.”

Her eyes widened at his words and he expected protestations. Instead she reached up and ran her palms over his head.

“Griffin,” she said, low and a little sadly. “Oh, Griffin.”

The sadness made his chest hurt, but he wouldn’t have been deterred even if she had argued. Not now. Not this time. A great urgency was building inside of him, a need to complete this with her before it was too late. He tore at the laces to her bodice like a ravening beast.

She didn’t try to stop him but simply lay beneath him and smoothed her hands over his short hair as if to soothe him. He got her bodice open and threw it aside, impatient. Her stays seemed to resist him willfully. He who had never had trouble removing the clothing of any woman.

“Let me,” she murmured, and gently set aside his shaking hands.

She unlaced her stays, and he filled his hands with her warm flesh. He made himself calm, touching her as delicately as he was able to in this state.

“All of it,” he ordered. “Take off all of it.”

She raised her eyebrows but complied, slowly working herself out of the miles of expensive fabric while he went quietly insane. When at last she’d kicked off her shoes and reached for her ribbon garters, he reared up.

“Leave them.”

He examined her, like a connoisseur with a particularly fine piece of artwork. Her body was slight, her breasts high and delicate, her hips slim, and her moonlight skin seemed to glow in his dim bedroom. The tuft of hair at the apex of her thighs was a gleaming red beacon.

His cock was hard and throbbing, but it wasn’t lust he felt looking at her, naked and vulnerable beneath him. It was a strange kind of possessiveness, a need to keep her close, to defend and honor her. She could be hurt in so many ways, this proud woman, and the thought of each was like the cut of a knife, so that in the end his very soul seemed to be awash in blood.

Couldn’t she see his blood? Couldn’t she keep him from hurt in return?

He looked at her, wanting, hating, needing. She had a trio of faint freckles on her left shoulder, and he bent to lick them.

Her hands clutched at his head. “Griffin.”

“Hero,” he murmured mockingly. He bit gently at the juncture of her shoulder and her neck. “Do you like that?”

“I… yes,” she whispered, and he was filled suddenly with a kind of melancholy yearning.

“What else do you like?” he asked.

“I want to touch you.”

He drew back and looked at her. She lay quietly, watching him with those serious diamond eyes. He was used to being the one who led the seduction. He did things to his lovers; they rarely reciprocated. Possibly it was a need to be in control or simply the dominant male animal asserting itself. In any case, he was unused to handing over the reins of lovemaking.

“Please,” she said.

Reluctantly he moved aside, ready to catch her should she jump up and try to escape. But she rose and knelt beside him, looking at him curiously. He still wore his breeches and shirt.

She touched his throat with a single finger, trailing it down to where his shirt parted on his chest. “Take this off, please.”

He shifted enough to tear the shirt off over his head.

“Now your breeches.”

He kicked them and his smallclothes off and lay back down, naked.

She sat on her knees for a moment, her head tilted curiously as she simply looked at his body. He itched to move. To grab her and roll her under him. But he took a breath and let her have her moment of silent examination.

Then she placed both hands on his chest, her fingers tightening a little, kneading the muscle above his nipples. Her eyes half closed.

“I didn’t know men had such hair upon their bodies,” she said quietly. “It’s never there on statues—unless in neat small whorls over the groin. But you have more than that, don’t you?”

Her hands stroked up, his chest hair curling over her fingers before springing back. It tickled a little, pulled a bit more. He moved his legs restlessly. He’d never thought much about his own body, save as it could please either him or a lover.

“Does it disgust you?” he asked.

“No,” she said consideringly. “It’s just so very… foreign.”

Her fingers were tracing over his belly now, circling his navel. She glanced at him. “Does it itch?”

His eyebrows rose in sudden humor. “No. Sometimes it catches in my clothing, which is quite painful, but that doesn’t often happen.”

She nodded, seemingly content with that answer. Her fingers were stroking through his pubic hair now, close to but not quite touching his cock.

“You have it, too,” he whispered. He lifted a hand to thread his fingers through her pretty red curls. Her legs were closed tightly, so he could do no more than pet.

She looked down, watching his hand in her maidenhair as if fascinated by the sight. “It’s strange, isn’t it? We wear so many clothes, laced, buckled, and tied up tight, and yet underneath we are like”—she spread her fingers, catching the base of his cock in the crook of her thumb and forefinger—“
this.
”

She looked up, meeting his gaze, her own solemn. “Do all lovers think like this? That they have a secret just between the two of them? Is this what it was like with your other women?”

Something about the way she classed herself in with the faceless other women he’d bedded disturbed him deeply. They were transitory. Mere phantoms that came and went in his life.

She was more to him than that.

He wrapped his hands about her slim waist and lifted her up and over him so that her legs straddled his thighs. “What other women? I can’t remember any woman before you.”

He pulled at her, intending to bring her closer so he could kiss her, but she forestalled him with a hand against his chest. “Your words are pretty, my lord, but the fact remains. There were other women in the past, and there will be other women in the future.”

“No.”
His denial was hard, immediate, and given without any prior thought. By talking of a future in which he had other lovers—a future in which they were apart—she implied that someday she would have another lover. Neither possibility was admissible.

He jerked her close and rolled her beneath him, lying on her heavy and hard. He might be crushing her, but he didn’t care.

She had to understand.

“There are no others, either for you or for me,” he said, his nose nearly pressed against hers. “No other people live outside this room. There is only you and I and
this
.”

He shoved into her. She was tight and not quite ready, but he pressed relentlessly. He would not be forestalled; he would not retreat.

“Griffin,” she gasped. She arched beneath him, her legs widening.

That gave him a little more room. He took advantage of that fact, pressing forward into her lush heat.

“You and I,” he panted, “are special. This isn’t like what everyone else does. It isn’t like anything I’ve ever had before. We are unique together.”

“That can’t be,” she said stubbornly, even as her slim fingers gripped his buttocks.

“It is,” he said against her mouth. Why wouldn’t she believe him? Why this denial of something nearly mystical? “Listen to me. I will never have another lover like you. You will never have another lover like me. What we have should be cared for and cherished.”

And he pushed one last time and seated himself finally. She was wet now, grasping at his penis in erotic little twists that made his balls draw up tight, made his brain go fuzzy.

“But I don’t think—” she began, maddening, maddening creature.

And since he could no longer form a coherent argument, he did the next best thing. He covered her mouth with his, thrusting his tongue into her honeyed warmth, his hips moving of their own accord. God! This was heaven, though he’d surely be damned by that blasphemous thought. She was soft and giving beneath him, making small animal sounds against his mouth, her hips cradling his, and all that time her sweet cunny gave and gave and gave.

He’d lost the ability to move with any finesse. Years of sophisticated practice in lovemaking fell by the wayside because he’d not been lying: This was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. Where before he’d been performing a physical act, now he did something that involved both body and soul.

With Hero, this ancient movement was making love.

He threw back his head, glorying in the sensations, physical and mental. She made him believe he could fly. He looked down and watched her face, glowing with exertion. Her eyes were closed, a slight frown between her brows, her mouth a little parted. She bit her bottom lip as he watched, and he knew she was close.

Close and he could make her fall over the edge.

He hitched himself up, pressing against the apex of her thighs with each thrust, rubbing against her little bud. She swallowed, her delicate throat working.

He grit his teeth and held out. He was close as well, but he’d not go until she’d found her bliss. He lowered his head and whispered in her ear, “Come for me, sweeting.”

She shook her head stubbornly.

“Yes,” he murmured against her neck. He could taste salt and woman, and his cock jumped within her.

She moaned.

“Let me feel your honey.” He licked down over her breast. “Come for me.”

She arched, her legs moving restlessly.

“Come, my love,” he murmured against her nipple, and then sucked that tender bit of flesh into his mouth. He drew it between his teeth and bit carefully, gently.

And she came apart in his arms, her cunny squeezing so exquisitely about his cock he let go of her nipple and arched back. He shouted his agony, holding himself deep within her as he jerked and jerked again in almost painful bliss.

She was his, he was hers, and at this moment in time their world was complete.

And what’s more, she had no doubt that she’d enjoy it.

Was this love? Silly question. She was too mature to mistake physical lust for love, but still… the question whispered in her brain. If she felt nothing for him, surely she wouldn’t have this near-constant longing to be with him? Surely she wouldn’t be already mourning their coming separation?

He sighed and lifted off of her, his penis sliding from inside her. She felt bereft.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his words slurring a bit. “I didn’t mean to crush you.”

“You didn’t,” she replied, as polite as if he’d apologized for stepping on her foot while dancing.

He grunted and threw an arm around her shoulders, scooping her close to his side. She lay against him, watching the rise and fall of his chest, the flutter of his eyelashes as he drifted into sleep.

She inhaled and smelled his scent—male and sexual. She thought about how she felt when she was with him, about the way he looked at her sometimes, as if she were a strange and very precious bird whose song he couldn’t quite figure out. She thought about Mandeville and his perfection and about Maximus and his pride and his hate. She thought about herself and what she’d learned since that fateful carriage ride when she’d placed her hand on a bare male cock.
Griffin’s
bare cock.

And as the shadows began to lengthen along the wall, she came to a decision.

She knew what she must do.